[Closed] Working from home - role call.

Have a look for Mitchell and Webb's sketch on working from home!

popmaster is at 10.30 and you can load the washing machine and get to 20+ points in no time

try to avoid sitting on the sofa with a laptop if there's a cat about & you want to actually get some work done...

Things to be wary of:
Staying in bed
Staying up till the early hours
Beers on school nights
STW and other non-work related websites
Mid-morning / mid-afternoon coffees
Lunch - unlikely to be snatching a sandwich, so factor at least an hour in
Early evening TV - Ready, Steady, Cook; Countdown etc.

Useful tips:
Main tips are to be very, very self-disciplined - one of the main things about working in an office is the social pressure to be working all the time; at home you don't have people seeing what you are up to.
Don't have any specific technology tips apart from getting the best virus protection / firewall software etc. and remembering to back your files up regularly.

Tax breaks:
If you are self-employed you can claim for lots of things to set against your taxable income e.g. proportion of gas / electricity, bike bits and repairs etc.
Not sure about the position if you are employed and work at home - maybe the company should provide an allowance.

I work from home. try and find a room to work in and try not to even go near anything you do after work- not even sitting on the sofa. Its very hard to 'turn off' from work esp if you try to work in the living room.
I get my phone bill paid and an allowance for Leccy.

I've set my Crackberry to switch on and off automagically, that way I have a defined start & finish to the day otherwise it gets quite easy to work really late. People will try take the P by ringing you late expecting you to answer and do work for them. The office tip is pretty good, get into the habit of closing the door on it the same time everyday and ignoring the phone ringing in it at 8pm etc..

Big plus is is being able to go out for a mid-week lunchtime ride in mid-winter rather than freezing your nuts off with a ride after work.

Yup - everything that Philby said (and here I am, checking out STW in the early hours!). If you set aside a room in your house to work from, then yes, you can claim back a proportion of all your household bills - if you have five rooms, you can offset one fifth of household running costs. Bathrooms / kitchens don't count.

I still work a couple of short shifts at a dry ski slope - it was my student job and I kept it on as it gives me a bit of time away from the business, and I treat it as a social activity. Sitting at home all day with just the dog for company can get lonesome...

The desktop upstairs in the office rarely gets to see the internet - it's a lean, mean image processing machine - I don't want it contaminated or slowed down by unnecessary progs and apps.

The laptop lives downstairs and gets abused horribly - loads of daft software installed.

Guido's tip about switching off is a good one - but not one that I can afford to follow. Clients often contact me (phone, email) 'after hours' and an instant response almost always makes the difference between getting the work or going without my new shiny bits.

Avoid daytime telly like the plague.

As a home worker a lot of the time i'd agree with the above. Also
- watch out for being a bit stir-crazy sometimes. Office life, while sometimes annoying, at least has social interaction so while you are home alone all day you'll possibly find you go a bit potty
- do make sure you separate work/home space and life
- if you are self-employed/small business i would recommend being available to do stuff after hours where possible. I answered a call at 9pm once and that has netted us about 2.2M dollars of revenue over 3 years simply because I answered the phone and we bailed them out of a hole.
- put time aside every day to do stuff for you like a walk or a ride or a shifty w2nk to some goat pron, you know....
- avoid working too hard , seriously, i can clear a report no worries at home in a day that would take me 2 or 3 in an office. The plus side is no-one knows how long anything takes so your billing isn't necessarily affected 😉
Its a good opportunity though to make some time for yourself but beware becoming isolated.

Ask an accountant about the tax-deductible stuff. The way mine explained it, it hardly seemed worth claiming for household expenses.

Been doing it almost a year now, and it's not as lonely as I thought it'd be - but I do have wife and baby here to keep distracting me.

If you work in a team, get your colleagues on a messenger application and you can chat about work (and last night's telly) throughout the day.

Beware the lure of STW and other non-work sites. The lack of people looking over your shoulder can be dangerous.

It's all very well to set clear start and end times, but if you're running your own business (are you?) that's the wrong attitude to take IMO.

If you're disciplined you'll get a lot more done than you would in the office.

I do try to have a shower and get dressed before I start work - but here I am at the PC in my dressing gown again this morning.

I work from home a day a week on average but it has sometimes been more as we are short on office desk space. I have always found having a tidy work space helps, I work upstairs in the office at a desk and this helps me to be in my 'work' frame of mind. I did the stir crazy thing a few weeks ago after not leaving the house for a few days - I went for a road ride at lunchtime and that really helped, so don't forget to take some sort of break outside, even if its just to pop to the shop for milk.

make sure you phone into work regularly so they know you're working.
Also, don't get addicted to constantly refreshing the topic list on STW...

Definitely second getting up, washed and dressed as if you're going to work otherwise you find yourself at lunchtime still in your dressing gown feeling really manky.

I've got to laugh at all of the suggestions above. I've worked intermittently at home for the past 8 years and was [i]never[/i] as disciplined. I was happy to be browsing the internet or taking time off for other stuff during the day, and equally happy to catch up at odd hours. Many's the time I've been banging out stuff at 1 am ready for folks Inboxes the next morning. Nice afternoon? Great, head off into the hills for a couple of hours. Family in bed? OK - head down and catch up on work. It certainly worked OK for me - and I was known for getting good results, in time, every time.

There was one point a couple of winters back when I realised I hadn't actually been outside for 3 days 😕 That was just the incentive I needed to head off for a wee while.

In the end, it's just down to the individual - find something that suits you.

Yeah, the flexitime element can be great. And I often get a lot more done in the evening after a reinvigorating afternoon blast round the woods than I would have done if I'd just worked my normal 9 to 6.30ish.

I worked from home a few years ago, if I spent more than 2 days at home in a row I'd go stir crazy and just drink gallons of tea & eat stacks of biccies on day 2, I was in sales at the time so visiting customers was key.
Recently I worked a day a week from home, would get loads done but I always felt pressured to work like a nutter on that day in case my collegues thought I was tossing it off so would be at the desk early and finish late.

Get a comfy chair like you'd have in an office to avoid back trouble.
Switching off from work helps, just close the door.
second the whole things about getting dressed before you start.

Nah - sitting in yer dressing gown, scratching you unwashed nads while on a conference call is where it's at.

Another home worker here... Been doing it for about 3 years. Pretty much all comments above are spot on. LMAO about the sitting in your dressing gown all day, not that I'd ever do that.

One top tip is that is you use VPN to dial into your company office then check that under the VPN connection properties > Networking tab > TCP-IP Properties > Advanced tab - Make sure you don't have use default gateway on remote network ticked. If you do then all your internet activity is going through the office internet connection so either being logged or slowing down those films your trying to watch 😆

Morning.. [i]*yawn*[/i] what time is it? [i]*scratch scratch*[/i]

I've been working at home on and off for a year. In a typical week I try to do three days in the office and two from home.

Definitely watch out for going stir crazy. I worked entirely from home for a different company and after two years I was climbing the walls. I couldn't take it. So I quit and went to Australia for a year.

Not washing for days is a bit of an issue. As is your other half expecting you to be able to do loads of chores because you are "sat at home". (Though being able to load the dishwasher or hang some pants out is a bonus and an easy way to earn some points).

Did you find that out the hard way Wharfedale?

Sounds like we could all learn a trick or two from you anyway.

Another home worker here, running my business from home . Went a bit stir through the winter, but now we're into spring things are looking up. As ever, toughest thing for me has been self marketing. Can't find enough things to keep crossed as the marketing emails and letters go out the door.

Got a question about insurance - computers, printers, monitors that you use for working at home. All my business kit is unnamed, and insured as part of household contents.

What do others do for insurance?

I've worked at home for about 18 months now.

generally it's fine although you do tend to get asked to do all the jobs aroudn the house that need doing durign the day and it can be a bit disruptive.

get skype to chat with people you work with on.

don't spend too long on here.

you'll get far fewer luncthime rides done that you expect.

customers seem to be quite positive about the whole thing of dealign with a company that only has home based staff (we have no office).

make sure you have a place to work that's your space - the dining room table isn't a good long term solution unless you live on your own.

School holidays can be a bit disruptive if you have children and a wife who's a teacher.

biggest plus - bike parts can be delivered and be in the shed before anyone sees them but school holidays can eb a problem (see above).

Two PCs is where it's at. One for work, one for home use. NEVER get the two mixed up.

I'd love to work from home... :/

chakaping - Member
Did you find that out the hard way Wharfedale?

Sounds like we could all learn a trick or two from you anyway.

Spent far too many years setting up VPN connections for directors/bosses, they are by far the biggest risk to any corporate network 😉

I can work from home when I want to but rarely do it, maybe once a fortnight. i'm doing it today.

My routine is generally get up about an hour later than if I was going into the office and logon immediately, make a cup of coffee and just browse emails, reply to a couple so people know you're working dead early. After everyone else has left the house I'll have a shower and dress in clean clothes (I think that's an important one), make myself something to eat and drink and get to work.

My problem is I start to get sleepy in the afternoon when I work from home so sometimes have a nap for dinner and then work till people come home again. I've always had the plan of nipping out for a ride at doinnertime but never seem to manage it.

Be very wary of taking things easy and telling yourself you'll logon later and finish it off, that way leads to long nights.

Edit:
Oh, and whoever sets up Wharfdales VPN clients should be sacked, no way I'd let our staff mess around with the VPN settings.

If I were an IT manager I'd give home workers on VPNs dedicated work PCs that I was controlling as if it were in the office. It is after all ON the office network. The risks are terrible.

If that wasn't an option then I'd arrange it so they didn't need to be on the office network, they'd have to use external sites to get what they wanted.

I work from home & so far today I've done nothing other than delete a few irrelevant emails as they've come in such as [i]"The sandwich girl is here"[/i] & [i]"anyone interested in an after work drink tonight?"[/i]
No she isn't & the drive home would take 5 hrs, so I'll pass

- most boring day for ages

Worked from home for 20 years now, it has its ups and downs.....but thats being self employed.

You only get work if you give a good service and you dont get paid for not working. But if you have a good run of work its great for getting out on the bike!